VX2000 footage to DVD

[ultimind]

I have a stack of MiniDV tapes that have to be converted to DVD. The footage on these tapes ranges from skateboarding to unedited footage from weddings to just screwin' around with people. What is the best, and most simpliest way of getting these 13Gb AVI files (when captured) to DVD? Also, some tapes would have to be doubled up on the same DVD (like if a wedding reception was two tapes) so I would need top-notch quality for 2hrs on a DVD. The wedding is pretty low-movement as opposed to the skateboarding (which, from past experiences encoding on Macs at school, require constant 9mbps)
This is all professionally shot material (not your standard home movies) even the screwin' around is pro-shot stuff, so I figured since the acqusition format is such high quality already (meaning, pretty much no gain is ever used in these tapes) I could get away with slightly lower bitrates on everything but the skateboarding.

If anyone can help me out here, that would be awesome.

PS: Cost is not a factor with any part of the process...So if there's a reasonably (under $1000) priced hardware MPEG2 encoding that has firewire input, please let me know.

[You_Are_Alive]

I've been using the DC1000 with DV input/output with great success. Quality is great thru and thru (4:2:2), can adjust a bunch of stuff realtime as well while capturing and after in post. Even at only 4000mb/s, color sataration and video signal is very clean. Dissolves, even long ones, look like they should without the ugly block pixelazation. To give you an idea, I completed a 2:06 Hrs movie to DVD with AC3 stereo, and its size came out to 3.64 GB (3,914,575,898 bytes). So I could have even captured more video. Its quality "looked" better then my s-vhs master. And installation went on very simple, no problems for me. By the way, I shoot with a VX1000 One large drawback though, but it does not matter to me but may to you, this Pinnacle product is discountinued and so has no support. Even though tech support, just like alot of others, is dismal. The user groups usually help out more.

Now, to let you know, when you want to author something with fancy menus and stuff be prepared to spend some extra time to study and learn how to do it correctly. This can be a daunting task, especially for some.

If all that hands on stuff doesn't tickle your fancy, go with a stand alone set-top dvd-recorder, such as the Panasonic models, they are great. Fast and very good quality, but not as customizable as the DC1000.

[King Dick]

Hello Ultimind,

Can I make the assumption that you will want to edit your tapes, add titles, make chapter points, etc., etc., and retain the DVD quality as near as is possible to that of the original DV tapes ? If my assumption is correct then there are two points I should mention at the outset :-

1. You are probably asking your question on the wrong forum as most of the members of VCDHelp do not get engaged in semi-professional film editing (you would be better served by visiting the Matrox, Pinnacle and Adobe forums).

2. You will be needing considerably more than $1000 to spend without taking into account upgrading your computer.

I have both the VX1000 and VX2000 cameras and need to do the compilation of DVD´s in the same manner as I have assumed you will require. If I go quickly through my set-up, it will give you some idea of what you are letting yourself in for !

Firstly, you will need a Pro/Semi-Pro capture card - these cards have a much wider bandwidth than normal capture cards and have a realtime DV hardware encoder on board. As "You_Are_Alive" indicated the Pinnacle DC1000 was such a card, but has now been replaced by the Pinnacle Pro1 and the DV500 series which both share basically the same hardware and differ in the supplied software packages. Both of these cards do full justice to the near studio picture quality of the VX2000, and cost between $600-1200 approximately. Both of these cards require a PCI bus bandwidth in the order of 90MHz, and many of the older mainboards, especially those having VIA chipsets, are not capable of providing this. It is also recommended that no other firewire ports are used on the system due to potential conflicts arising between them.

The editing software is a matter of personal choice, and as I have used Adobe Premiere for many years I elected to stay with it and am now using version 6.5. The Pinnacle cards were being supplied with Premiere 6 as part of the software package, with an update to 6.5 for an extra $19 - definitely worth having. Full titleing facilities and many effects, filters and blends are also included.

Now the difficult bit - conversion to MPEG ! The Pinnacle cards have an onboard hardware MPEG encoder, which with the recently released 4.5 driver set can operate in better than real time. I have to say that the quality of the encoded output is not satisfactory and not recommended for high movement scenes such as skateboarding. The Adobe software encoder (based on the MainConcept encoder) is definitely a better proposition, but still has problems with motion. Staying with software encoders there are three choices that are capable of delivering high quality outputs when used in Variable Bit Rate mode - they are :-

1. The TMPGEnc.
2. The full version of MainConcept.
3. CinemaCraft CCE

TMPGEnc. can produce very high quality with good motion detection, but under these conditions it is very slow, of the order of 15 hours per hour of edited film on my dual system. Its big advantage is the price of under $100.

MainConcept costs 2 to 3 times more than TMPGEnc., depending on version, and yields considerably faster encoding times. It did not fulfill my requirements, so I would suggest you try out the demo version first.

I am currently using CCE 2.66.01.07 for my own encoding. This is by far the best version produced by CinemaCraft to date, and I find it very difficult to fault it in any way. The main advantage of CCE is the speed it delivers without loss of quality (a 3 pass VBR encode, which is really 4 passes, takes 2 hours per hour), and the disadvantage is the $1950 price tag.

Realtime dedicated hardware encoders start at around $3000, but as this is not my field of interest, I feel it would be better if you looked up some of the posts from another forum member, BJ_M, who has quoted costs for these in recent times.

For authoring I use the Pinnacle Impression DVD Pro 2.2. This is a very easy programme to use for actual authoring, but takes some time to learn how to make your own menu´s. The cost is about $600, but to this you must the cost of Adobe Photoshop or ULead PhotoImpact needed for menu making.


So, either this will have put you off high quality DVD making, or you will be making an appointment to see your Bank Manager in the near future.

Regards.

[ultimind]

I've been trying out the Panasonic HR2 (the one w/ the hard drive built in) and it seems to be ok for some stuff, but when I need the customization of the menus and such, i always turn to my dual 1Ghz G4 with Apple's DVD Studio Pro. But I've never been happy with the results from Apple's software encoder. For some small, interview-type material, I've found that iDVD produced some decent results, but whenever i threw raw DV material at it (no color correction, etc) it never delivered the same results. I try to leave my Mac gear for strictly server applications, and desktop publishing applications. Also, not having it accessable 24/7 (its in an office that's locked up at night) I'd rather find PC solutions to most of my DVD encoding problems. (i'm usually encoding at 2 or 3am) I always use TMPGENC 2pass VBR for my final videos (after color correction, stylization effects and such) and i'm usually using 8-9mbps max and a 6750kbps avg. Then, most customers are happy with the menus that I make for them in Photoshop and DVD Studio Pro. But most of these DVDs i'm making are more for archival reasons. The final product DVDs are usually for customers and not for backup/archiving...the backup of those still sits on MiniDV (broadcast-grade tapes) in a safe. DVDR discs are far cheaper than MiniDV, and if I can get near the same quality for a 1/10th the cost, its worth investing some time, money, and effort into seeing what's out there.